Currently working on “Reactor Glands” and giving Chicken Outfit a bit of a rest this week – briefly – but I’d like to talk about underground comics in general since I’ve been concerned at the number of alternative and underground offerings out there. I may be out of touch or something but I dunno, there isn’t anything that’s piquing my interest.

I grew up reading horror comics mostly. First it was Skywald Publications publications like “Nightmare”, “Scream”, “Psycho” and the like. (Which you can now read in their entirety at Archive.Org – oh fucking joy!) Superhero comics didn’t hold any kind of interest for me – they struck me as juvenile even as a pre-pubescent. Regardless, I continued on my merry path to destruction via horror and other spoof, satire and parody magazines and comics.

These days, there are few things that seem to offer the thrills and chills of yore. Fuckitor isn’t too bad if you haven’t seen it, but it’s short on meat. Mostly the same thing over and over – people getting mutilated and tits and well, it kind of reminds me of that guy in Art School Confidential who draws the Barbarian with the Thor hammer, smashing skulls open. So, even though it’s cool looking, there’s not much beyond the surface. It had a nice little boost from the Comics Journal for a brief period. I mean, I like it, it’s just that I wish there was more to it.

There’s a sea of idiotic junk online – in terms of web comics, so I avoid those pretty much completely. Though, there has been some decent work here and there. It’s a slog to find anything in the din, of course, so I fall back on what I used to read. It’s easier.

Anyway, what’s my point? Oh yeah. The stuff we’re producing here is trying to move back into the realm of the weird that we haven’t seen in a while. There are far too many self-absorbed, “autobiographical” tales out there from artists who think their lives are far too interesting. It’s like watching a social media feed except in comic form. Granted, there are a lot of good comics out there, I just don’t know what they are. Any help?

"In combination with the gruesome art style Deagnon provides, in addition to Stasyna’s aid in wit writing, the first issue of Chicken Outfit has proved a worthy mention for the year’s most interesting self-published comics"